“Breast exam then a follow-up exam. But neither thing happened, according to the ‘patient.’ An’ like I said, all the other names on those folders don’t belong to anyone at all.”
“I daresay we have no reason to be surprised by that. Where are we with the appointment diary from the clinic, then?”
“One of the DCs ’s ringing up every one of them listed. They’re real enough, that lot. But ’f cutting’s going on there, no one’s going to talk to coppers about it, mind you. You get anything on the mobile?”
“Hackney Downs is as close as we can get it. We’ve got a circle drawn from the mobile phone tower in that location.”
“For a door-to-door?”
“If we must. But that’s a hell of a lot of manpower. I can put in a request, but I don’t see Hillier giving it his imprimatur.”
“？’N other words, no?”
“In other words, no.”
“Acting Detective Chief Superintendent Lynley?” came from the doorway, and Lynley didn’t need to look in that direction to clock the speaker, since Dorothea Harriman was the sole individual who referred to everyone by full rank and surname.
He said, “Dee?”
“A message from Judi-with-an-i. You’re wanted. At once. ‘For a chat’ is how she put it. But I don’t exactly see the assistant commissioner having chats with anyone, if you know what I mean. Especially you. No offence intended.”
“None taken.” Lynley rose and after telling Winston to check on what was being gleaned from the CCTV recording of cars on Streatham High Road, he headed to see the AC.
Sir David Hillier’s face was more florid than usual. The man always looked as if he were teetering on the edge of a life-ending stroke. He greeted him with, “Where the hell are we? What do we know? What’s the progress?”
He didn’t indicate Lynley was to sit. This meant the meeting would not be a long one, for which Lynley was ardently grateful. He gave the AC line and level: Progress was slow but it was being made. The difficulty was not having enough manpower.
Hillier said, “DCs don’t grow on trees. Continue.”
They had a fairly good idea about the location of the victim’s mobile phone, Lynley told him. They had reached conclusions about the clinic that the victim had been instrumental in bringing to the attention of the local police. They also had discovered that a false identity was being used by the woman who apparently ran the clinic, and they had stills from the CCTV footage during the day as well as on the night Teo Bontempi was attacked.
“Have those ready to give to the Press Office,” Hillier said.
“Sir, may I point out—”
“I’m getting hell from above, Superintendent.”
Acting only, Lynley thought. Praise God for that.
Hillier continued. “We’ve got fading interest on the part of the media in this story of the Nigerian barrister and his wife with the missing daughter. If the daughter shows up, there might be one more day of front pages. At that point, the journalists’re going to begin sniffing round for fresh meat—especially the tabloids will do—and we both know that the murder of a police officer is exactly that: the freshest, reddest meat there is aside from a decent royal scandal or some MP going at it with an underage girl, a twelve-year-old boy, or a KGB agent. The commissioner and the Press Office want to be prepared with something to throw them. CCTV stills are just the ticket, so let’s go with that. Photos printed with: ‘Have you seen this person? Do you know this person? Do you recognise anything about this person? Contact the Metropolitan Police.’ You know the dance.”
“We’re attempting to improve the quality of the photos first, sir. Without that, they’re going to be fairly useless.”
“Not important at the moment. That rabid mob—”
Lynley could only assume the AC was referring to the journalists who’d been assigned to the story.
“—will doubtless be quite happy with whatever we give them as long as we give it.” Hillier paused for a moment of consideration before he added, “All the better, isn’t it, if the photos aren’t clear? Demonstrates the constraints we’re working under.”
After years of labouring daily under the steely gaze of AC Hillier, Lynley knew when further argument was pointless. He’d never been happy when exposed to Hillier’s obeisance to the tabloids. Pandering to their collective desire to dictate the course of an investigation was not only illogical, it was also dangerous. He realised, however, that Hillier, the commissioner, and the Press Office—having never seen the images from the CCTV footage—would probably accept anything from him as evidence of their progress. So he said he’d get on it straightaway and he went to inform Winston that they would need to send to the Press Office a few random images of individuals entering the apartment block on Streatham High Road. And it didn’t matter who those individuals were.